You’ll want to get going early and loosen your belt buckle a notch when heading over to Cook’s Corner Café in Dearborn, Mo. Although sisters Charlene Cook and Darla Dubois just opened the 120-seat former pizza shop in Nov. 2007, it gets busy soon after they open at 5:30 a.m. (7 a.m. on Sundays) and stays that way until they close at 2:30 p.m.

On a recent Sunday morning, before 11 a.m., customers were parked up and down the road as far as you could see. That’s particularly amazing considering there’s not much else around, except for North Platte High School up the road and a couple of small businesses nearby that are closed.

But it’s easy to see why. The kitchen buzzes with high energy as smiling ladies bring out one dish after another. One of the big draws is the chicken dinner special, a large plate of golden fried chicken with homemade rolls and three side dishes for $6.50. Homemade biscuits and gravy, hot roast beef sandwiches, bread pudding and homemade coleslaw are some of the other favorites.

“Everything is incredible,” says customer, Pam Gagnon, as she prepares to leave with bags of fried chicken dinners that she will take to nursing homes in St. Joseph. “They absolutely love it,” she says. “They say, ‘boy those girls know how to fry chicken.’”

And then there’s the award-winning pies. Darla does all the baking and has won blue ribbons for her pies at the Platte County Fair for a couple years in a row. They are full and luscious — almost too good looking to eat.But make sure you do.

It’s hard to predict what might happen now that the Cooks Corner Café is in Dearborn. But there are already signs of a furniture store opening soon next door.

“Everybody tells us,” Charlene says, “that we brought Dearborn back to life.”